born and raised in East Berlin (GDR), artist, contemporary
witness - and ransom - will
introduce you into the "dark side" of the GDR Regime.
The Regime of the German Democratic Republic.

Alongside the borders of the political west (the once divided "two" Germans states - the east and west),
parts of the BERLIN WALL still function as a witness to terror and violence and scenes of crime -
illustrating the cold war, where set guns once functioned as a frontier of a surveillance state.

Today we question and investigate - which were the methods of the propaganda apparatus?

How did the "Ministry of State Security" of the GDR watch and control the activities of each citizen; each
life with which they had been entrusted?

Mischa Naue guides you through the world of Erich Mielke, the leader of the
"Department of State Security"
(MFS), a system which had developed a gapless system of control and manipulation of their own citizens.

As a daily practice, neighbours spied on each other, parents would report and betray their children to the
system - and vice versa.

In 1989 the MFS would have 90,000 people working for them. The controlling system functioned as a self
contained “State in a State”.

The self appointed "Breastplate and sword" of truth of the GDR political party, did never consider to
restrain themselves of any sort of persecution.

Physical − and mental torture and humiliation were part of a cruel system, a common practice of
interrogation, which was seeking to present itself as normal to the rest of the world.

In order to fulfil the political strategy, manipulation and the penetration of human rights and government
laws were common practice to silence the resistant citizens.

64 death penalties had been applied on human beings until 1987 by the government of the GDR.

Because of the lack of a common juristricition, basic rights were seemingly non - existent.

The spirit of freedom, of personal - or artist rights - had been completely swept under the carpet, leading
to the fact that so called "political enemies", were sold to the western and democratic part of Germany
as a "ransom" towards the "BRD" - (Bundesrepublik Deutschland).

From then on, the sale and success of political persecuted humans started to boom.

This went forth until the citizens of the GDR did liberate themselves from tyranny.

I am inviting you to join my East German part history on the trail of a long forgotten dictatorship culture.